4 years ago, engineers, even when laid off, could write code and maintain a legacy software for small agencies.
Today, you can't charge for 2 weeks of work, because work is done in 2 hours with AI agents.
Expectations became much higher, you must produce a lot of impact and output to be competitive. Problem with that is, while producing output, there is no attachment to the work you are producing, its one prompt away, in 85% of cases, and you are in next project. Jumping from one project to another, everything is prompt away
How are you preparing for the future with higher expectations and higher competition?
karamanolev•1h ago
Right now, as advice to other people, I'd say: "just don't work in pure-software, SaaS companies where you can rewrite the app in a week with agents". Plenty of such work, many people don't consider it "stereotypically attractive". I love it.
throwaw12•1h ago
taylodl•32m ago
AI is a productivity-enhancement tool. We're working on getting real numbers, but what we'll do is go to our other backlog of work (not the mainstream backlog I was talking about above) that was "shelved" because the ROI didn't make sense. Well, with increased productivity it might make sense now. That would add even more work to the backlog.
I get it. A lot of people here on HN pay attention to FAANG and startups. Well, the FAANG companies are now decades old and have pretty much run their course. Startups have always been dicey, but nowadays we're back to the model before the mid-90s where industry experience mattered more than being a so-called "serial entrepreneur." All that is to say if you're Gen X and were in this industry back in the 80s and early 90s, then things are looking very familiar.